


regrets will follow you (there's blood on our hands)

by Emgirl16



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Gen, Minor Character Death, Minor Romance, Minor Violence, Past Lives, Strong Female Characters, and did a "what if" scenerio, basically i explored the bond between dopplegangers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 20:07:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20102884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emgirl16/pseuds/Emgirl16
Summary: Way back in ages before vampires and doppelgängers, there is a girl far too beautiful with doe eyes and warm skin and hair soft to the touch.A "what if" where Elena inherits more than a face from her ancestors and this helps make things a little bit better.





	regrets will follow you (there's blood on our hands)

**Author's Note:**

> Really this is just an indulgent fic on my part, I just wanted to explore a little bit of the background for all the doppelgangers and I can't resist a happy ending.

Way back in ages before vampires and doppelgängers, there is a girl far too beautiful with doe eyes and warm skin and hair soft to the touch.

Her name is Amara and she is the child of powerful magic, her blood will flow through every page in history.

She will be the first, the catalyst.

But for now, she is barely a woman and is innocent in the evils of the world.

When she becomes of age she is taken to the elder of her family, her great-great-grandmother, to have her fortune read.

The old woman was more skin than person and her sightless blue eyes peered into Amara's very soul. 

"No man will resist you, and people will flock to your cause. You'll be the rise and fall of empires, blood will spill in your name." Her words echoed and were filled with power.

"Will I find love?" She dares to ask, for finding a love like the one her parents shared was all she desired.

"Yes." The woman answers.

"Then I will be powerful and happy," the girl grins, "I am blessed."

"No, _Foolish Girl_," the crone shakes her head, "you are _cursed_."

Years pass and the girl forgets her warnings until she lies bleeding at the feet of the ones she cared most for.

Her dearest friend and the woman she betrayed spares no more than a passing glance at her. It is what she deserves.

Silas, the man she once thought she loved, screams her name even as they seal him into his prison.

_I have brought this upon myself._

She thinks about the words, about the child who waits for her at the house of her sister, about the years she will never have. 

_I will not forget_, she clenches her jaw, **_we_**_ will not forget_. 

She dies young and beautiful.

_She dies so very young._

Tatia is born with faint whispers of the warnings.

She does not listen.

She is born into a world that is cold and cruel. Her parents slave away to stave off starvation. 

She works harder than Amara ever dreamed of, her hands are calloused and strong.

She has no time for strange dreams in ancient tongues, where she is dressed in silk and draped in gold.

She has no true magic like the wife of Mikael, she is no shifter like the wolves. She is nothing special and so the dreams are nothing but her imaginings.

When she is old enough, she is apprenticed to the wise woman of the village, one who uses her herbs and faint trace of magic to heal the sick and birth healthy children into the world.

She learns many things from the woman and is a dutiful student, that is why she is brought along when Mikael's wife births their youngest son.

It is where she meets Elijah and Nik, where the beginning of the end comes about.

The whispers warn her, they try to stray her from secret meetings and stolen kisses, but she does not listen.

Her parents do not know, but her mother suspects something. It is why her father arranges for her to marry a man that lives across the settlement from the boys. 

She does not love him, but she tries too.

She falls pregnant quickly which begins a long period of their separation. She must not stray far from her home, lest tongues begin to question her honor. 

She births a daughter and her husband lights up with joy.

It is almost enough to make her love him; she grows fond nether-less. 

Then came winter and all of its tears.

She is left widowed, less than three years into her marriage. 

She cries because he was a good man and he deserved a wife much better than her. She cries for her daughter who will never know the father who would sing to her or rock her to sleep.

Her mourning lasts a year, a good proper time. The men in the village will not let widows and orphans starve, so they drop food off in bundles by the door. 

And so, four years pass before she sees Elijah and Nik once more.

She will not marry a man she does not love again; she cares not for the looks people will give her. Neither will she live on the charity of her neighbors. She goes back to her master and asks for more training.

The old woman gives her a good look before accepting. She is growing too old for her job anyway.

With this, Tatia gifts her former home to her parents, for it is better crafted than the tiny hut they dwelled in. She moves herself and her daughter into the home of the old woman.

Nik chances across her when she is gathering water one day.

It reignites a fire she thought long burned to nothing.

She learns more of them and loves them even deeper. She cannot choose and she cannot let them go.

_(In her dreams a woman with her face cries for her.)_

When Nik comes to her, grief etched into his face, she opens her arms to him.

She does not know it is the last time she will hold him.

Again, their blood is spilled upon the ground.

_Nik and Elijah will find her after. They will cradle her, cry, and it will cut them deeper than they have ever felt._

_They bury her in a field of flowers._

_Her child will grow far away, aching for a mother she will never know._

Katerina is not foolish and learns to be wary early. 

She is not born into the warm family her previous incarnations were, she does not discount her instincts so easily. 

_(Her father's tempers must be carefully managed. She has scars to remind her of her missteps.)_

Unfortunately, she grows cold and alone. She grasps for connection sometimes, the loneliness overcoming her sense.

_(Her dreams are of strange places and languages she cannot place. She loves and loses and does it all over again.)_

She favors a few taverns spread out amongst her homeland. Places where no man or boy will know her. She drinks tea to handle any results of her activities.

Then she falls ill and misses a dose. It is far too late when she realizes, and her face is bruised for weeks when her father finds out.

She births a daughter and it is the beginning of the end.

She does not get to hold her before her father takes her child where she will never find. He does not wait for the sun to rise to tell her she will leave as soon as she's able.

They send her to England, where she quickly learns to hide her accent and origins. She charms her way into becoming a companion for a young widow, earning a spot into society.

She is invited along to a party where she meets the Mikaelson's.

They are charming, handsome, and they make her heart flutter.

She is wary, but her treacherous heart is her undoing.

She never forgets the look of shock when they attempt to compel her and she brushes it off like nothing.

She never forgets the crack of her neck and how death crawls across her soul.

She dies and is reborn with a desperate wish:

_Let the next one be better._

Then she forgets her dreams and gifts because the girl she once was was dead and the gift must be passed to the next.

_Her body lives on, an eternity within her grasp, but her heart dies a lonely death, its potential never realized._

Finally, Elena is born _(with old eyes and a broken heart and love to spite all her pain)_ against all the odds of the universe.

She will be the last.

Elena knows from the start that she cannot be foolish, that she must trust her instincts, and that she cannot lose her kindness.

_(A lesson has been learned from all of her past mistakes.)_

She will prevail and she will pick her battles wisely.

There is already enough blood on their hands.

Her dreams warn her, wisely, she does not shake off the chills they leave behind. She drinks vervain tea every day from the age of ten and devours lore that she only barely managed to hide from her parents to trigger memories that have fallen through the cracks.

Knowledge is power and she has centuries of it running through her veins. 

She feigns otherwise, even in the jaws of grief, it isn't wise to tip her hand early. _(She never becomes numb to it to the feeling, no matter how heavy her soul grows.)_

It is strange how even with all her gifts, she is still a child who has lost people she loved dearly.

She falls for Stefan because she knows it will not last, he is a balm to force her back into the living, to soothe her pain back into something manageable. 

Perhaps that makes her like Katherine, but it does not make her love any less real.

Then a ghost comes for her, a face she knows as well as her own because it is hers.

"_Katerina_." She meets the eyes of her double with not a hint of fear. 

"How do you know that name?" Katherine is shaken. Elena was not supposed to be like this, with such ancient eyes.

"_You have forgotten us, but we have not forgotten you, **Daughter**_." The endearment rolls off Elena's tongue so sincerely that Katherine flinches.

"You are not ready to accept your peace." Elena_TatiaAmara_ sigh. "But we will be waiting when your war is done.”

Katherine is gone in a flash and does not return for many years, her plans are forgotten as she is forced to remember a girl who just wanted a home to belong to. 

(Isabel comes with taunts and warnings about a monster, she withers under Elena's gaze. She disappears with a fear embedded deeply into her heart.

She never returns.)

Elena does not fear Klaus, for her worst enemies are dead or buried. He comes for her blood and she has already been down that road twice before. She is used to the feeling of her life staining her hands and feet. 

_(She cannot fear the boy who once spilled his secrets to them, the one who cried on their shoulders, the one who held them at night._

_Elena cannot love him as Tatia did, but she will never fear him.)_

She cannot fear death when it has always been curled within her.

Elena meets the brother of her supposed devil and her heart is taken from her.

_(It is not the infatuation that Tatia had or the warmth Katherine felt, Elena knows better. It is not nostalgia clouding her, for they are both different people despite their faces remaining the same.)_

Even when he betrays her she forgives him, because it was for family.

_(Family, honor, duty. She lives by these words. She will not be the girls of her past.)_

She lives because of his gift and not because of a sacrifice (_so much blood)_ and she loves him more than she can imagine for this.

_(When he is free his first thought will not be of her face, but of her kindness and strength. He is helpless to the feeling of it.)_

Together they will form a better world. She and Klaus will have a peace they will keep, without all the bloodshed and broken treaties.

_(Though they never voice it, they grow into something like friends.)_

Her ghosts will rest easy and fade from her, finally able to rest.

Katherine will come home to a pardon from the ever so gracious Klaus and leave with Damon by her side.

This is the peace she has longed for.

Their curse has been broken. 

_(Silas will spend forever in his tomb, unable to let go of his obsession. Even without her past selves, Elena will watch carefully over his watery grave, for some monsters should never wake._

_And that one never does.)_


End file.
